Daddy
by juliette729
Summary: BD Spoilers: Edward/Nessie. Edward spends some time with his new daughter as they wait for Bella to wake up from her transformation.


**_A/N: Another Daddy/Daughter Moment_**

**_Check out my profile to see my others. _**

**_This came to me the second time I read Breaking Dawn. There is a moment when everyone is finally letting Bella just be with Renesmee. She's holding her and looking out the back window as Renesmee 'tells' Bella about everything she had missed while she was being changed. One of those moments was Edward singing/humming to Renesmee and Bella says that she can vaguely tell she's in the background of that memory somehow. So, here is another one of my Daddy/Daughter moments._**

"Edward?"

I didn't move. I didn't want to speak to anyone. I had a vigil to hold. I sat still as a stone statue watching every meager breath that entered and left my Bella's body. It seemed as if Carlisle's suggestion of using morphine might be helping. Bella lay perfectly still on what only a couple of hours earlier had been her death bed, the operating table we had set up in my father's study. Alice had come in and helped me to clean up the room and Bella after the horrific event of delivering Resnesmee and then trying everything I could imagine to keep her heart pumping enough for the venom to take hold.

I thought I would lose myself, my mind, everything if I had not heard that first beat again. Now, I sat and watched and waited for it to stop again, for her to wake up to a new life. I had not lost her. She was still with me, would be with me forever.

"Edward?" I sighed at my sister's pushiness. I didn't turn to respond. She wasn't thinking anything in particular either for me to figure out what she was up to. However I could hear the faint other heart beat that was now in the room besides Bella's dying one.

"What Rosalie?"

"Do you want…do you want to hold your daughter?" The words rolled around in my head 'my daughter'. I still wasn't sure what emotions I had left in me for this occasion. I had finally started changing my grief to a small amount of hope earlier in the day, what seemed like decades ago now, when I had heard the thoughts of the child that Bella was carrying. It loved her. It knew who its mother was and loved her as I loved her, unconditionally and irrationally. I wasn't prepared for that. And then when I heard that it recognized my voice as well and knew who I was, its father. I was overwhelmed. I'm glad Jasper wasn't in the room at the moment he would have had to leave for all the emotional turmoil in the room.

Bella beamed, her smug knowing smile. I couldn't read her mind, but I could read her eyes and they spoke volumes. She had always thought of what was inside of her in that way. A child, a thing to love and cherish and even to die for if need be. I didn't understand at first how she could give her life for what was obviously going to be a monster. I had begged and pleaded and told her she could have as many children as she wanted if that's what she desired. I don't think it ever took a firm hold in my mind that she didn't want just any child, it was this child, our child that she wanted. No other would do.

I turned for the first time in the chair I had set up my three day vigil in and stared at my blond sister as she cradled an armful of pink blankets. I had not seen the child since I had taken her from Bella's arms. I wasn't sure if I was prepared to hold her again.

Rosalie's face softened as she stared at me. "It's ok Edward, if you're not ready. It's just, well….I figured you might want to spend some time with her, while the two of you wait on Bella to wake up." For once Rose's mind wasn't full of malicious and petty thoughts. She was truly trying to be a concerned sister.

"Am I ready for this Rose?" I barely spoke the words, they were lighter than a whisper, but I knew she heard them perfectly.

"I think so. She's perfect Edward. She's a gift, a gift that from the moment Bella knew what was inside of her, that she wanted to give to you."

I nodded. Knowing that's exactly how Bella probably thought of this. She always felt we were out of sync somehow and that she needed to lessen the invisible, nonexistent gap she thought was between us. She would have seen this as a way to give me something that only she could have given.

If I could cry I would want to right now. From exhaustion, from fear, from love, from hope, from every emotion I had experienced in the past 24 hours. It was almost midnight, this had been the longest day of my eternal existence.

"I want to see her." I held out my arms and Rose walked over and placed the sleeping bundle in my arms. She straightened the blankets and watched as I looked at my daughter. "She's grown?"

I could tell that in just the few hours since her birth she had grown. She was not as tiny as she had been when I first took her from Bella.

Rosalie nodded. "Carlisle thinks that for now she is continuing on the same growth spurt she was on while still in Bella. That just because she has now been born it hasn't stopped."

I wondered how long this would keep up or if and when it would stop.

"Just call if you need anything. Esme or I will be right up." I nodded once again and turned back to face Bella.

I looked down at the face in the blankets and moved them around so I could get a better view. Even with her eyes closed I could tell they were the same shape as Bella's. I had watched her mother sleep for way too long. Her head was covered in bouncy light curls, the color caught my attention. I slightly gasped as I curled a piece of her hair around one of my fingers. It matched mine exactly. Her nose was Bella's and I could tell she shared her mother's coloring in her cheeks. They were a deep rosy pink. Other than the pink stain of her cheeks she was icy pale. I placed my hand next to her cheek and noted the similarities. I wondered if she would sparkle in the sun too or just glisten slightly. She was perfect.

I continued to unwrap the blankets that I'm sure Rosalie had meticulously placed around my daughter. The thought echoed once again in my head 'my daughter'.

Alice, no less, must have dressed her already. She had on the most delicate pink sleeper that was edged in what looked like expensive lace and ribbons. I counted ten tiny fingers and ten toes. All delicate and small. I watched as her chest moved evenly with her breathing and listened to the clearly human heartbeat as it pushed blood through her veins. She was a mixture of us both. Half of my perfect Bella and half of me.

I sat and cradled Resnesmee in my arms throughout the night. As dawn was breaking over the horizon and filling Carlisle's study with a hazy grey light I felt her shift in her blankets. I looked down as she blinked her eyes open. The same sleepy blink of Bella, the one I was going to miss, but not now, I could watch it on the face of my daughter. I sucked in a breath of air as I truly noticed for the first time the brown intensity of her eyes. She stared up at mine and wiggled around for a moment until she had her hand out of her blankets and was reaching up towards my face. I heard in her thoughts that she wanted to touch my face. I snuggled her closer and leaned my head over so that she could place her tiny warm hand on my cheek.

I gasped at what I saw. I thought she had just wanted to touch my face, but she had wanted to show me something to share her thoughts with me. Her tiny hand felt very warm next to my cheek. She had flashes of Bella from the evening before, from the brief moments she had been held by her mother. I could tell a concern and questioning in the background of the vision.

I took her hand and let her wrap her hand around my finger.

"That was your mother. Her name is Bella. She's asleep now. When she wakes she'll still be your mother, but she'll look different. She'll be more like me, not like how she was when you were inside of her."

I stood up and walked closer to where Bella was lying so still. I had watched Esme, Rose and then Emmett all turned into vampires. The process had taken days and most of it was not spent in silence on their part. However my Bella was lying as still as a stone. I took Renesmee over and shifted her in my arms so that she could see Bella.

"That's her, you mother, my love. She'll be with us again soon."

Renesmee went to reach up again to want to touch me. I marveled at the fact that even as a newborn my daughter would have a talent, one similar to my own, but different. Where I could read people's thoughts, she could tell people hers by her touch.

I immediately saw the question of when she would get to see her mother again. "Soon, but I'm not sure. Perhaps in a couple of days."

The next thought to flash through her mind was of her thirst. "Ahhh, you want breakfast huh?" Her angelic face lit up into a smile showing a row of her already perfectly formed teeth. So odd to see on a face so young, but so perfect as well.

"Rosalie?"

I knew that the name was spoken in barely a whisper, but that in a moment my sister would be at the door.

"Is she hungry Edward?"

I turned and in her hand already was the bottle that I assumed was for Renesmee.

"Yes."

"I figured it must be time for her to eat again. Here." She passed me the bottle and I sat back down in the chair and propped Renesmee up in my arm a bit and placed the bottle at her mouth. She eagerly and swiftly started to suck down its contents which I could tell by the smell was not baby formula, but a diet closer to mine.

"So, her eating habits are still the same?"

Rose nodded as she watched me feeding my daughter. "Yes. I think Carlisle wants to try formula as well later, just to see if she will take anything else."

"That's not a bad idea."

Rose stood in the doorway for a moment watching our interaction. "You're a natural at this Edward. Who would have known?" I could hear the bit of mirth behind her statement.

"I don't know about that Rose. I'm still worried, we hadn't planned for a baby. I had never considered the idea of being a father and now all of a sudden it's here. I'm holding this child that I had never allowed myself to imagine and I'm totally unsure what to do. Plus she's different. She's nothing like our kind totally and she's definitely not human, what can we expect?"

"She is still more than what you expected though isn't she?"

I nodded. Rose was right on that account. I had no thoughts of what was growing inside Bella to be so perfect, so beautiful, so much like the two of us together. I had envisioned a red eyed monster of some sort bent on killing even those it should love. That it couldn't love because of what it was. But I was wrong. I loved this child I held and I knew already of her love for her mother and for myself.

"Still doesn't change the fact I have no clue about being a father."

Rose chuckled. "Our Edward, our I know how to do everything better than anyone else Edward is admitting to not knowing how to do something?"

I shot my sister a look. "I'm serious Rose. I'm terrified at the same time that I'm extremely in awe."

Rosalie sobered up in her mind and walked over and squatted down in front of me so I could see her as I fed Renesmee.

"Edward, just love her. Everything else will be ok. She has a large extended family. A house of full of aunts and uncles and a set of grandparents whom she has all already gotten wrapped around her tiny fingers. Carlisle is beside himself in awe as well. Esme hasn't stopped smiling yet. We're all here to figure this out together as far as having a half vampire half human child in our midst. But as far as the father part. Just love her and you'll do fine."

I just stared at Rosalie. I had never heard much of anything profound in the least come from her in all the years I had known her. She could surprise on occasion and this was one. I nodded.

"Thanks Rose."

She took the empty bottle and turned to leave me once again with my daughter and wife. Renesmee's cheeks had flushed a slightly deeper pink now that she had eaten and I could see the expectancy in her eyes waiting on something. Anything.

All night as I had watched her sleep, just as I had watched her mother sleep before, I had composed music in my head. I held my daughter, the tiny creature that I had created with my Bella, closer and started to rock her as I hummed a melody to her. It was soft and lilting. I sounded as if butterflies could ride on the notes as it drifted. I stared into the chocolate brown eyes of my Renesmee, my daughter, and hummed her song as we waited for the eyes of the other that we both loved to open.


End file.
